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I have a map here. He drew it from his pocket, neatly folded, and spread it out. It was a map such as is to be purchased for fifty cents at the store in San Juan, showing the main roads, towns, waterholes and trails. With a blue pencil he had marked out the way they planned to go. Howard bent forward and took the paper. 'We are going the same way, friend, he said as he looked up.
We've had no milk, sir, for the children since Tuesday, and Miss Alleyne said that you would be vexed. I would have gone myself, sir, but I couldn't well leave, and I know Miss Alleyne will manage it's only fifteen miles, and Sandy says that the two cows and calves are pretty fat and can travel; there's a bit of feed at those waterholes about the Canton.
Belding had told him of that most terrible of all desert trails a trail of shifting sands. Lash had traversed it, and brought back stories of buried waterholes, of bones bleaching white in the sun, of gold mines as lost as were the prospectors who had sought them, of the merciless Yaqui and his hatred for the Mexican. Gale thought of this trail and the men who had camped along it.
We remained this day at the camp to give the horses a rest after their harrassing journey over the range. August 12. Proceeding about five miles over uneven open forest ground, with isolated blocks of rock, we camped by a chain of rocky waterholes. The trees growing here were casuarina, box, apple-gum, and ironbark. August 13. Sunday. Prayers as usual at eleven o'clock. August 14.
The hand of Fate is against them. If a drought comes, they eat off the grass near the water and have to travel far out for a feed. Then they fall away and get weak, and when they come down to drink they get bogged in the muddy waterholes and die there. Or Providence sends the pleuro, and big strong beasts slink away by themselves, and stand under trees glaring savagely till death comes.
Why doesn't Providence give a poor honest bullock as much show for his life in a drought as a damned, filthy blackfellow! Instead of hoofs in this part of the country at any rate cattle ought to have feet like a bandicoot, then the poor beasts could worry along by digging waterholes in the river bed." Then, sick at heart as he was, a faint smile flitted over his sun-bronzed face at the fancy.
Tell me how did you ever get here?" Then Mescal told him how the peon had led her on a long trail from Bitter Seeps, how they had camped at desert waterholes, and on the fourth day descended to Thunder River. "I was quite happy at first. It's always summer down here. There were rabbits, birds, beaver, and fruit we had enough to eat.
He shipped what beef was fit and that, of a truth, was not much! and settled down for the winter, trusting to winter snows and spring rains to refill the long-dry lakes and waterholes, and coat the levels anew with grass. But the winter snows had failed to appear, and with the spring came no rain. "April showers" became a hideously ironical joke at nature's expense.
I hesitated about climbing out into the desert, for I wasn't sure of the trail to the waterholes. Noddle wandered off up the canyon and never came back. After he was gone and I knew I couldn't get out I grew homesick. The days weren't so bad because I was always hunting for something to eat, but the nights were lonely. I couldn't sleep.
Of course, he broke our fences to let his sheep in to water at our waterholes, which was very annoying to us, because sheep befoul a range and destroy it; they eat down to the very grass-roots, and cattle will not drink at a water-hole patronized by sheep. Well, our patience was exhausted at last; so my father told Pablo to put out saltpeter at all of our water-holes.
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